If any one of my essays needed some major revisions, the Ethnography was the one. Luckily the errors and issues were so glaringly obvious that they should be easy to identify, if not necessarily to correct. It is also the essay I’m most ashamed of, not only of the “finished product” but also of my writing process as a whole.

First I would start with having a clear mission statement. The essay was lacking direction from the very start. I was confused as to what I was supposed to write and how I was supposed to write it. It was also the longest essay that we Rats were expected to write, so it was also a bit intimidating for my little rat brain.  I know now that I need to have a point to prove about the discourse community, in this case, I needed to talk about why my company, Delta Company, was “Best on the Hill,” not just go about trying to prove that it was a discourse community in the first place. I was kind of confused about the “Ethnography” and “Discourse Community” thing, because while the project was presented as a sort of lab report it wasn’t clear what we were trying to prove with this report. Turns out it wasn’t just the validity of the subject matter, oh well, lesson’s learned.

Second I would communicate better with my professor. Having a good rapport with him would have probably helped with those overwhelmed feelings, and lead to turning the essay in on time. He could maybe have helped me fix specific errors, especially with structure. Which leads me to my third revision strategy.

I need to restructure the essay badly. I tried to the same free write technique that I did with the Guide to Writing in a genre. It was massively less successful here. I should really have kept the lab report/ethnography format in mind, as it would have given me a much more clear cut structure to follow, which in turn would probably eliminated massive amounts of stress. As it is, the essay is a garbled mash of nonsense.

Fourth strategy: DO THE INTERVIEW!